French Senator on the US, Europe and Ukraine
Situation in Ukraine and Security in Europe
French Senator Claude Malhuret’s speech:
Situation in Ukraine and Security in Europe
March 4, 2025
[please forgive my machine assisted translation with edits for English clarity]
Mr. President, Prime Minister, Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, my dear colleagues.
Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is slipping away, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington has become the court of Nero: an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a fool on ketamine tasked with purging the civil service.
It’s a tragedy for the free world, but above all it is a tragedy for the United States. Trump’s message is that there is no point in being his ally, as he will not defend you, he will impose more tariffs on you than on his enemies, and he will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictators who invade you.
The so called “king of the deal” is showing what the submissive art of deal is. He thinks he will intimidate China by capitulating to Putin, but Xi Jinping, seeing such wreckage, is undoubtedly accelerating preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a President of the United States surrendered to an enemy. Never before has one supported an aggressor against an ally. Never before has one trampled on the American Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could oppose him, sacked the entire military leadership at once, weakened all counter-powers and taken control of social networks.
This is not a mere illiberal drift, it is a beginning of seizure of democracy. Let us remember that it only took a month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have faith in the resilience of American democracy, and the country is already protesting. But in just one month, Trump has done more damage to America than in four years of his previous presidency. We were at war with a dictator, we are now fighting against a dictator supported by a traitor.
Eight days ago, at the very moment when Trump was patting Macron on the back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN in lockstep with Russia and North Korea against Europeans demanding the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the draft dodger gave moral and strategic lessons to the war hero Zelenskyy, before dismissing him like a servant, ordering him to submit or resign.
Last night, he took a step further into disgrace by halting the delivery of promised weapons. What should we do in the face of this betrayal? The answer is simple: stand firm.
Above all make no mistake. Ukrainian defeat would be European defeat. The Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova are already on the list. Putin’s goal is to return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The Global South await the outcome of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is the end of the order put in place by the United States and its allies 80 years ago, whose first principle was the prohibition of acquiring territories by force.
This idea is at the very core of the UN, where today, the Americans vote for the aggressor and against the victim, because Trump’s vision aligns with Putin’s: a return to the spheres of influence, where big powers dictate the fate of smaller nations.
“I’ll take Greenland, Panama and Canada, you’ll take Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe, he’ll take Taiwan and the South China Sea.”
The golf oligarchs at Mar-a-Lago parties call it, “diplomatic realism.”
And so we are alone. But the claim it’s impossible to resist Putin is false. Contrary to the Kremlin’s propaganda, Russia is struggling. In three years, the so-called second-best army in the world has managed to gain only crumbs from a country with a population three times smaller.
With interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign currency and gold reserves, and a demographic collapse crisis, Russia is on the brink. The American lifeline to Putin is the greatest strategic mistake ever made during a war.
The shock is violent, the shock is violent but it has a virtue. Europeans emerge from denial. On day one in Munich, they understood that Ukrainian survival and the European future are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
First, accelerate military aid to Ukraine to compensate for the American abandonment, to ensure it holds, and of course, to secure its and Europe’s place in any negotiation.
It will be costly. It will require ending the taboo on using frozen Russian assets. It will require bypassing Moscow’s accomplices within Europe itself by a coalition of willing countries, of course including the United Kingdom.
Secondly, require that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children, prisoners and absolute security guarantees. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what Putin’s agreements are worth. These guarantees must be backed by sufficient military force to prevent another invasion.
Finally, and most urgently, because it will take the most time, we must rebuild the neglected European defense, which relied on the American umbrella since 1945, and dismantled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a Herculean task, but it is on its success or failure, that the leaders of today’s democratic Europe will be judged in the history books.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This recognizes that France was right for decades in advocating for strategic autonomy.
Now, it must be built. Massive investment will be needed, strengthening the European Defense Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonizing weapons and ammunition systems, accelerating Ukraine’s EU membership, since it now has the largest army in Europe, rethinking the doctrine and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capacities, and relaunching anti-missile and satellite defense programs.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is an excellent starting point. And much more will be needed.
Europe will only become a military power again, by becoming an industrial power again. In short, we must implement the Draghi report, for real.
But Europe’s real rearmament is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially against Putin’s collaborators, both the extreme right and the extreme left.
They once again stood in the National Assembly, yesterday, in front of you, against European unity, and against European defense.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump admit is that their peace is capitulation, the peace of defeat, the replacement of a De Gaulle Zelenskyy with a Ukrainian Pétain at Putin’s beck and call.
The peace of collaborators who have for three years refused to help the Ukrainians at all.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? The risk is great. But in recent days… but in recent days, the public humiliation of Zelenskyy, and all the reckless decisions made over the past month, have stirred Americans to action.
Polls numbers are plummeting, Republican representatives are met with hostile crowds in their home districts, even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer in their prime. They control the executive branch, Congress, the Supreme Court and social networks.
But in American history, the defenders of freedom have always prevailed. They are beginning to rise once more.
The fate of Ukraine plays out in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to fight for democracy, and here, on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for our common defense, and to restore Europe as the power it once was in history and hesitates to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st Century.
Long live free Ukraine, long live democratic Europe.
[the original French: https://www.independants-senat.fr/post/claude-malhuret-situation-en-ukraine-et-sécurité-en-europe ]
© Translation Copyright March 6, 2025, David August, all rights reserved davidaugust.com
David August is an award-winning actor, acting coach, writer, director, and producer. He plays a role in the movie Dependent’s Day, and after its theatrical run, it’s now out on Amazon (affiliate link). He has appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC, on the TV show Ghost Town, and many others. His artwork has been used and featured by multiple writers, filmmakers, theatre practitioners, and others to express visually. Off-screen, he has worked at ad agencies, start-ups, production companies, and major studios, helping them tell stories their customers and clients adore. He has guest lectured at USC’s Marshall School of Business about the Internet.
